13 Bonus Hours to Train

If you’re like most people you’ll find that time is a commodity in short supply. We all probably wish we had more time in the day to spend with our family and friends, to exercise and to sleep.

Not many people in the last few days of their life are thinking ‘I wish I gone in to work more’.

So if we’re all busy what can we do about? Well the first thing is to prioritize the things of value in your life. The second thing is allocate time to each of these priorities based on how important it is to you.

If you rank family high on your list of priorities than you want to be doing things that allow you spend time and/or speak to them as much as possible.

But rather than get into a discussion about what matters in your life and how well you are doing to invest in these areas I want to show you ways that can find 13 bonus hours to train. Now you need to realize this is based on 5 minutes per day and 3 workouts per week over a year. This amount to 780 minutes or 13 hours per year.

How much closer would you be to your goal with an additional 13 hours per year? How much better would your health be? How much more weight could you lose? You get the idea.

So without further ado here are ways to find 13 Bonus Hours to Train.

1. Use Antagonist Movements

The typical bodybuilding or beach body workout involves 3 sets of 10 reps of a particular exercise. After completing 10 reps you rest for the prescribed amount of time and then complete your remaining sets.

Let’s use the example of doing bench press followed by 1 arm dumbbell rows. When you complete a set of presses your chest is contracted and fatigued whereas your back is stretched and fresh. So it makes sense that you can do a next set of an antagonist exercise (i.e. a row) sooner than another set of the same (i.e. bench press).

If you take the same rest after a set of press and rows as you do as completing only a set of presses, let’s say 90 seconds, you will achieve twice the number of reps in the same time. Or overall you will save around 3 minutes.

2. Do Paired Mobility & Stretch Drills

When you warm up it is more effective to stretch in a similar manner that you will then try to mobilize. For example, if doing a half kneeling hip stretch you can then proceed to a half kneeling hip rocking drill without changing you body position or set up. Doing once on each side will save 1 minute than if you moved to another area and performed an entirely different stretch and mobility drill pairing.

3. Include a Stretch During Your Sets

In the first example we said you would take 90 seconds rest between sets. For most people this means a trip to the water fountain and a chance to catch up with all your gym buddies. There are two problems with this.

First of all, your rest breaks will always run over 90 seconds, never under. Secondly, you had a chance to stretch a tip muscle group for 90 seconds but instead sat on a bench tightening your hips even more.

Instead look to stretch the muscle you just worked during the set on your rest break. If you just did a pressing movement you may want to stretch your pecs and shoulders. A number of people starting out with front squats will want to stretch their forearms on the rest break. There will be something that will benefit from a little extra stretching and your rest breaks are a great time to do this. This will save you at least a minute in terms of how much you need to warm up and mobilize during your next workout.

Just these few examples will save you 5 minutes per workout which works out to over 13 hours per year. Look at your program to see how you can be more efficient with your time. Another way to look at it would be to imagine you had pay $5 for every minute you train. If that were the case how well would you use your time? And what kind of results would you get?